Goodfellas: The Country Bar Theme Scheme

Summary

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Chameleon – "Goodfellas: The Country Bar Theme Scheme"

Podcast: Chameleon
Host: Josh Dean
Episode Date: February 19, 2026

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Overview

This riveting episode of Chameleon dives deep into a wild true crime story that weaves together failed country-themed restaurant chains, elaborate financial schemes, and the hidden past of a turncoat mobster embedded in American suburbia. Host Josh Dean and investigative journalist Robert Anglin unravel how the collapse of Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill franchises led to the exposure of Frank Capri—real name Frank Joya Jr.—a former Lucchese crime family soldier, federal informant, and master con artist who used witness protection as a cloak for years of high-stakes fraud.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Unlikely Origin of the Investigation

• Initial Reluctance (00:11 – 01:13):

  • Robert Anglin admits he “had zero interest in the germ of this story that would go on to consume eight years of his life,” initially shrugging off closures of Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill locations as routine business failures.

• Something Doesn't Add Up (01:29 – 02:15):

  • Only after multiple locations nationwide closed, while others were announced or under construction, did Anglin realize there was a much deeper mystery.

The Anatomy of the Scheme

• How the Scam Worked (02:15 – 03:35):

  • Developers, led by Boomtown Entertainment and Frank Capri, exploited mall owners’ eagerness to attract popular franchises. Mall owners paid millions up front for bar and grill deals, but in many cases the restaurants were incomplete or quickly shuttered, leaving contractors, staff, and investors stiffed.

  Quote:

  “Some of them were empty husks... all your contractors... they were being stiffed. Everybody on the working end of these restaurants, by the way, that includes waiters, bartenders, managers—they weren’t being paid either.”
  — Robert Anglin (03:35)

• Culture of Secrecy (03:31 – 05:16):

  • Mall owners were “embarrassed” to admit they’d been conned; few would go on record, meaning the scam largely evaded attention except through lawsuits.

A Mobster Hiding in Plain Sight

• Meeting the Enforcers (05:35 – 07:41):

  • Anglin describes a tense encounter with three men in suits at a restaurant—or as he texts his editor afterward, "I think I just met with three mobsters that turned out to be prescient." (07:02)

• Frank Capri’s Vanishing Act (09:33 – 11:30):

  • Capri, it emerges, has almost no traceable background. In custody filings, his ex’s lawyer floated the possibility he’s a mobster in the Witness Protection Program—a suggestion Anglin at first dismissed as “preposterous,” but which he later finds credible.

• Cracking the Identity (12:04 – 14:57):

  • A major investigative hurdle: no photos of Capri/Joya exist online. Anglin secures a photo and runs it by mob experts, prosecutors, and former cops—who all confirm Capri is Frank Joya Jr., a Lucchese soldier-turned-government informant.

  Quote:

  “He had an illustrious history as a con man and a mob enforcer. He helped kill people... he was a made man in the Lucchese crime family.”
  — Robert Anglin (15:01)

Exposing the Bust Out

• Making it Public (15:19 – 17:21):

  • Anglin’s series takes years to publish due to legal caution. The DOJ even calls and asks the newspaper not to run the story.

  Quote:

  “What does Woodward and Bernstein call it? The non confirmation confirmation.”
  — Robert Anglin on the DOJ’s reaction (16:18)

• Mob Tactics, Witness Protection Shield (17:21 – 21:33):

  • The scheme is described as a variation of a traditional mob “bust out.” Despite detailed lawsuits and evidence, authorities seem unwilling or unable to prosecute Capri—perhaps because his status as a protected government witness shields him from scrutiny.

The Shadow Side of Witness Protection

• Systemic Dangers (21:33 – 24:49):

  • Anglin describes how witness protection allows extremely dangerous individuals to live and operate under the radar, with no state or local awareness.

  Quote:

  “Murderers and con artists... were unleashed into these communities with no state, local or federal law enforcement... knowing what was going on. It’s scary as hell.”
  — Robert Anglin (21:33)

The Rascal Flats Debacle: Fraud Redux

• A New Brand, Same Old Scam (23:21 – 25:33):

  • After exposure, Capri repeats the scheme, this time via the Rascal Flats Bar and Grill, using proxies such as his girlfriend and business partner.

  • Secret recordings clinch his identity for a second round of reporting:

    “It is Sopranos right off the script. It is Frank threatening, abusing, screaming in vitriol that would make a nun blush.”
    — Robert Anglin (26:51)

Law Finally Catches Up—Sort Of

• Indictment and Plea (27:04 – 30:32):

  • In 2020, Capri is indicted for wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. The government is forced to act due to overwhelming evidence, including audio tapes and documented fraud.

  • Capri pleads not guilty, attempts to seal the court, and deploys legal chicanery. His girlfriend, Tawny Costa, assaults a reporter; only minor consequences follow.

  • Ultimately, Frank Capri accepts a five-year sentence and $19 million in restitution. He never publicly admits his original identity.

Post-Prison: Podcast Fame and Mafia Lore

• Capri’s Next Hustle (30:45 – 34:14):

  • Released in 2025, Capri launches a podcast, "Made Man," reveling in his mob past while denying wrongdoing in the bar schemes—even after his guilty plea.

  Quote:

  “Frank is spinning tales quite proudly about himself and his pals... He’s telling everything about his past, the Mafia stuff. He’s claiming these were legitimate business operations.”
  — Josh Dean (31:53)

• Lasting Impact (32:19 – 33:29):

  • Capri/Joya aided numerous convictions as an informant and even instructed the FBI on mob operations.

  • As for his future? After prison, he considered becoming a used car dealer—Anglin notes his penchant for “industries that could raise an eyebrow.” (33:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the cunning of the scam:

  “It’s really brilliant if you’re into financial scams.”
  — Robert Anglin (04:31)

• On the DOJ’s plea not to publish:

  “The Department of Justice decided to give us a nice polite call and ask us to please not run that story.”
  — Robert Anglin (16:15)

• On the risk faced by journalists:

  “I was, as they like to say, watching my six constantly... I didn’t want my picture on the wall where [murdered reporter] Don Bowles is.”
  — Robert Anglin (29:52)

• On the “mobster 101” audio tapes:

  “It is Frank threatening, abusing, screaming in vitriol that would make a nun blush.”
  — Robert Anglin (26:51)

• On the flaws of Witness Protection:

  “Murderers and con artists... were unleashed into these communities with no state, local or federal law enforcement... knowing what was going on. It’s scary as hell.”
  — Robert Anglin (21:33)

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Major Segments & Timestamps

• 00:11 | Introduction of Anglin and the Toby Keith Bar & Grill closures
• 01:29 | Realization that closures are nationwide, prompting deep investigation
• 03:29 | Breakdown of the advance money scam targeting developers
• 07:41 | Anglin’s eerie encounter with Capri’s enforcers
• 10:00 | Tracing Capri’s hidden identity and the Witness Protection angle
• 12:38 | Linking Capri to mobster Frank Joya Jr.
• 15:01 | Confirmation of Joya’s mob history
• 16:15 | DOJ requests the story not be published
• 17:21 | Explanation of the “bust out” scheme
• 21:33 | The wider danger of witness-protected criminals
• 23:31 | Rascal Flats Bar & Grill scheme as a “redux”
• 26:51 | Secret audio tapes reveal Capri’s mobster persona
• 27:16 | 2020 indictment after years of inaction
• 29:42 | Tone-deaf official response; Anglin’s personal security concerns
• 30:32 | Capri’s guilty plea and sentencing
• 31:12 | Capri’s “Made Man” podcast and public mafia storytelling
• 32:23 | Lasting impact of Joya's testimony on organized crime trials
• 33:29 | Capri’s release, continued denials, and post-prison career plans

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Tone & Language

The episode blends the sly, world-weary humor of investigative reporting with the dramatic flair befitting true crime and mob stories. The conversation is candid and peppered with incredulity at the brazen audacity of the fraud, the seeming impotence of law enforcement, and the enduring American willingness to believe in the next big thing—or the next big restaurant concept.

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Conclusion

This episode of Chameleon unpacks not only a spectacular, multi-million-dollar fraud but also highlights the systemic issues within witness protection, the vulnerabilities of retail real estate, and the doggedness of investigative journalism. Robert Anglin’s eight-year pursuit lays bare how a hidden mob past can morph into complex, country-bar cons—and how in the end, the conman himself is now free to podcast about the life he once tried to keep secret.

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Transcript

[Robert Anglin]

Campsite Media.

[Josh Dean]

Hello.

[Robert Anglin]

What is. What do you want me to say?

[Podcast Advertisers/Promoters]

Chameleon.

[Robert Anglin]

Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon Weekly. When an Arizona Republic editor approached investigative reporter Robert Anglin with a lead back in 2015, he didn't exactly bolt out of his chair. In fact, Robert says that he initially had zero interest in the germ of this story that would go on to consume eight years of his life.

[Robert Anglin]

That lead that there'd been a lot of closures of the Toby Keith I Love this Bar and Grill.

[Josh Dean]

The Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grill, if you're not familiar, is a franchise of country themed restaurants inspired by the Toby Keith song I Love this Bar. They were elaborately decorated. Some locations even had bars shaped like guitars. There are currently only two Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grills in existence, both in Keith's home state of Oklahoma. But 10 years ago, it was a new and seemingly flourishing chain.

[Robert Anglin]

We had several around the Phoenix area and they'd been closing, and she wanted to know why. I thought it was a dumb idea because bars close all the time. My position was, who cares? We have better things to do still.

[Josh Dean]

Robert did some digging.

[Robert Anglin]

What happened was I started looking at these restaurants, and it wasn't just Phoenix.

[Josh Dean]

In fact, franchise locations of Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grill were closing all over the country. Employees at Toby Keith I Love this.

[Robert Anglin]

Bar and Grill got word that they'd.

[Josh Dean]

Be losing their jobs over the holiday.

[Podcast Advertisers/Promoters]

Customers have been trickling in for the.

[Robert Anglin]

Bar and Grill's final hours. But why Toby Keith's is closing is still a mystery. And even as restaurants were closing, the company was opening new restaurants, or at least announcing and planning and cutting deals to open new ones. So it made very little sense to me. And so that became the central question of the original story. What the hell was going on?

[Josh Dean]

Robert spent the next several months delving further. He talked to developers, realtors, contractors, plumbers, basically anyone who might have had general or specific knowledge of what exactly was going on here.

[Robert Anglin]

Well, it was obvious what was happening was that the developer was going in.

[Josh Dean]

Meaning the developer of these specific locations who held the Toby Keith franchise, cutting.

[Robert Anglin]

Deals with real estate developers, property managers, malls, businesses, where they were going to locate these restaurants. And in some of the big name developments all over the country, It's a.

[Josh Dean]

Little complicated, but here's how it works. Mall and shopping center developers compete for shops and restaurants to put into new locations, thinking being that the hotter and more desirable your retail offerings, the more likely customers are to come and they'll often pay money up front to developers who have licenses for certain high profile brands and restaurants like Toby Keith's I Love this Bar and Grill to lure them in. This money gets parceled out in stages as the project is built out, often millions of dollars at each stage. And it turns out there wasn't a lot of due diligence done on these guys out of Phoenix who were developing a lot of the Toby Keith locations.

[Robert Anglin]

It turned out that these restaurants weren't.

[Josh Dean]

Being completed or they were being partly completed.

[Robert Anglin]

Different restaurants had different outcomes. Some of them were empty husks, some of them were being completed, some of them were completed and opening with much fanfare, only to close weeks or months later. And in the process, all your contractors, your drywallers, your plumbers, your electricians, they were being stiffed on the back end. Everybody on the working end of these restaurants, by the way, that includes waiters and bartenders and managers, they weren't being paid either. And so these restaurants would open and close and collapse.

[Josh Dean]

And believe it or not, this pattern wasn't being exposed. The news that some Arizona developer was apparently running a scam that used Toby Keith restaurants to pocket advance money for mall owners without actually delivering the restaurants wasn't spreading across the industry.

[Robert Anglin]

It's really brilliant if you're into financial scams, because mall owners want to covet that relationship with their builder and they don't want other people to know what they're doing but. Or they want to secretly create these deals because they're going to reap the windfall. They don't want your restaurant to go somewhere else. So it creates its own kind of secret sauce.

[Josh Dean]

This creates a vacuum for opportunists. There was another factor at play too, helping to keep this apparent scam under the radar.

[Robert Anglin]

The developers themselves were loath to talk about it. It's like the victim of any financial scheme. They're embarrassed, they don't want to admit it. Even years later, there were very few that would actually go on the record and talk publicly about what happened.

[Josh Dean]

The only way Robert could identify the locations in some cases was by the lawsuits that were starting to pile up against the Phoenix based developer of these locations, Boomtown Entertainment, led by a man named Frank Capri, who absolutely would not talk to Robert no matter how many times he called or emailed.

[Robert Anglin]

He won't talk. But management calls me one day and says, we want to have a conversation with you about what's going on.

[Josh Dean]

They asked Robert to come to a meeting at one of their restaurants in Phoenix, just before dinner.

[Robert Anglin]

It's about 4:30 in a mall that should be vibrant. And I walk into an empty restaurant. There's nobody there. The restaurant's open, there's servers. And I get escorted back to a VIP room in the back of the restaurant. It's just me. I'm sitting at a high top when three gentlemen walk in and each take seats around me. And they proceed to talk to me about how I'm on the wrong track and I really shouldn't be reporting this story.

[Josh Dean]

Maybe not menacing exactly, but not subtle either.

[Robert Anglin]

I'm not a small guy. Neither were they. And they're wearing suits. And one of them won't talk. And I have no idea who this is. So I have these two guys, they're talking to me and. And they introduce this third gentleman as Phil. And as they start trying to talk me out of these trends and as I break out files and start talking about their numbers and start talking about the restaurant closures in different cities and their announcement of opening new ones, they tell me that I really shouldn't be doing this.

[Josh Dean]

Robert wasn't intimidated. He kept pressing for answers and directed many of them at this guy Phil, who was just sitting there silent.

[Robert Anglin]

I can be kind of a jerk. So I start watching questions at Phil and I'm like, phil, does this sound right to you? Phil, are you okay with this? And Phil is grunting at me and he's getting kind of agitated and you can tell. So I leave the restaurant about 45 minutes. An hour later, walk out of an empty restaurant at dinner time in the middle of a commercial area. Weird. And I get in my car and I text my boss and I say, okay, I think I just met with three mobsters that turned out to be prescient.

[Josh Dean]

This is Chameleon, the show about people who hide behind masks. And I'm Josh Dean. This week, the story of a turncoat mobster who wasn't just hiding, he was hidden.

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[Josh Dean]

This is Chameleon, the weekly. Robert Anglin published his first series of stories on the Toby Keith restaurant scheme and the lawsuits that piled up in its wake in the Arizona Republic later that year in 2015. And pretty quickly after that, people started getting in contact.

[Robert Anglin]

Some of the managers in the restaurants are calling me and saying, okay, you know, this is part of something else. And then I started hearing that Frank was a mobster. We get told things like that all the time. Usually we don't believe it. It's almost apocryphal. I'm an Occam's Razor kind of guy. People calling me and telling me he's a mobster sounds just preposterous.

[Josh Dean]

On the other hand, there was that weird encounter in the back of the empty restaurant.

[Robert Anglin]

I start digging into Frank's background. I start looking for records and court cases. I start talking to more people, not about the restaurant scheme itself, but who Frank Capri is. And what becomes immediately apparent was that he had no real background.

[Josh Dean]

Frank Capri was basically a ghost with no history that Robert, a seasoned investigative reporter, could find anywhere.

[Robert Anglin]

Frank just emerges in the late 90s. He just arrives on the Phoenix scene. But as I dig into his Social Security number, I start noticing anomalies. There's just nothing there. So now I'm. I'm interested.

[Josh Dean]

It was a court filing in a custody dispute that provided Robert the break he was looking for.

[Robert Anglin]

I find references from the lawyer for his former girlfriend, the mother of two of his kids, that he might be a mobster. She accused him of that and accused him of hiding money from her. And there is some very unusual court play. There are filings by Frank's lawyer to try and seal this custody record. There are filings by Frank's lawyer. In one of them, he actually says, if Frank Capri were a mobster, if Frank Capri were in the Witness Protection Program, Frank would have to lie to you about it, your honor, because of the rules of the Witness Protection Program. And this kind of knocks me off my seat.

[Josh Dean]

If this was true, it explained everything. The Mobster act, the lack of a history. Frank was in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

[Robert Anglin]

I'm thinking this guy really might be A mobster. But how deep is that? And how do I prove it? If he is in the witness protection program, that means the federal government had this guy on a string while he was committing fraud all over the country. And that's a different kind of animal altogether. So I start trying to formulate a plan to figure out how I can prove Frank Capri might not be Frank Capri.

[Josh Dean]

Investigative journalism is slow work, and it took more than a year, a year in which Robert was reaching out to anyone who might have known Frank Capri in his former life. Ultimately, a private investigator he knew had a tip that the man now calling himself Frank Capri at the center of the Toby Keith saga was in fact Frank Joya, a member of the Lucchese crime family from New York City, a made man who was turned by the feds and placed in the witness protection program after putting a long list of mobsters behind bars. But Robert had to find a way to confirm this.

[Robert Anglin]

There were no pictures of Frank on the Internet either. You couldn't find a candid shot of Frank Capri. He didn't attend the these grand openings. His face never appeared in the openings of his restaurant. I formulated this plan. If I could take and find a picture of Frank Capri today, and I went back to who Frank Capri was in the 80s and 90s, I might be able to show that our Frank Capri here was somebody else there.

[Josh Dean]

Specifically Frank Joya, the turncoat Lucchese soldier.

[Robert Anglin]

That's where I'm driving at. And that's when I convince one of Frank's associates to give me pictures of Frank.

[Josh Dean]

Robert proposed a plan to his editor and the paper's lawyers.

[Robert Anglin]

If we can get people from Frank Joya's day to identify this photo of Frank Capri without any prompting from me, we can make the correlation between Frank Joya Jr. And Frank Capri.

[Josh Dean]

Robert worked the phones. He went to mob lawyers, retired prosecutors, former cops, basically anyone he could think of who might have run into Frank Joya back in the day.

[Robert Anglin]

And as I did that, I actually started getting calls from let's. From former mobsters. And they would say, you have a picture of Frank Joy Jr. Now, we didn't tell him who Frank Capri was. We just provided the picture and said, do you know who this is? And then I started getting these calls. We need to know where this guy is. Who is this? You're a reporter. Can you tell us where he is? My line was like, no, I can't. But if you wait, I might be able to write it.

[Josh Dean]

A mob historian named Jerry Capechi was also helpful.

[Robert Anglin]

He's an encyclopedia of New York mob. And he looked at the photo and said, yeah, that's Frank Joy Jr. And so I was able to use these people as sources. A mob prosecutor from the day, a mob lawyer, currently conversations with mobsters and historians about the mob. Then I started taking it to federal prosecutors.

[Josh Dean]

They all confirmed that the man in this photo, Frank Capri, was actually Frank.

[Robert Anglin]

Joya Jr. And he had an illustrious history as a con man and a mob enforcer. He helped kill people, he plotted murders, he ran drugs, he ran guns, and he was a made man in the Lucchese crime family.

[Josh Dean]

Robert's stories confirming this connection and laying out Capri's true story didn't run until 2017, two years after the first tip. It took that long to truly confirm the hunch, report Capri's backstory, and assure lawyers that it was all true.

[Robert Anglin]

We shored up every avenue that we could think of. And by the way, I offered Frank a chance to talk about this stuff. We went back at his associates, we went back at his family, his current girlfriend, all of that. As I built these stories to tell the world that the guy who was behind the Toby Keith failures was actually a mobster in the Witness Protection Program and was being protected by the government also. This happened as we moved to publish, though lo and behold, the federal government, the Department of Justice, decided to give us a nice polite call and ask us to please not run that story.

[Josh Dean]

Which felt like another kind of confirmation.

[Robert Anglin]

It was, what does Woodward and Bernstein call it? The non confirmation confirmation.

[Josh Dean]

Yeah, there was one wrinkle, one thing Robert and his editors just had to have the faith to run with.

[Robert Anglin]

Federal law enforcement officials could not officially confirm the existence of someone in the Witness Protection Program. It's actually violation of law for them to do that.

[Josh Dean]

Confirming that Capri was Joya, a seasoned mobster, gave Robert a fresh perspective on the restaurant scheme too.

[Robert Anglin]

It all got into very, very sharp focus. The Toby Keith situation was nothing more than a bust out scheme, which in mob parlance is basically, what you do is you take all the assets of a business out and then you gut the business and drive the owners out of business. But this is a variation on that in which Frank took the money, didn't develop the restaurants, and then washed his hands of it and said, oh, it's just a business problem. You know, businesses fail all the time. Well, this is failure by orchestration.

[Josh Dean]

The fraud was clear. Surely Frank Capri's years of avoiding prison were now over. Well, not exactly. We'll get into that story after the break.

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[Josh Dean]

Welcome back to Chameleon. Robert Anglin was able to paint a pretty clear picture of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Frank Capri and his company, Boomtown Entertainment. Robert identified at least 48 lawsuits in 31 cities, including more than $60 million awarded to plaintiffs by judges who found Capri and his company L. Then he and his readers waited for some sort of criminal investigation. Instead, silence. No state, local or federal investigation sprung up in the wake of these very damning allegations.

[Robert Anglin]

Let's face it, I don't have any special insight into why there wasn't a criminal prosecution. But when we asked over and over if they planned on prosecuting, nobody would say anything. And again, that's one of those pieces of circumstantial evidence. The federal government is refusing to prosecute someone and we can lay out the scheme. I mean, I had flowcharts and nobody would file an indictment, nobody was getting prosecuted, and business owners were claiming fraud over and over and over again in their lawsuits. So the failure by authorities to even apparently investigate if they were, but to make a case against Frank Capri further showed us that we were on the right track.

[Josh Dean]

Robert could never prove what was behind this inaction from law enforcement. But he didn't have to think hard to come up with explanations.

[Robert Anglin]

One of the stories I wrote is about the impunity of people in the Witness Protection Program to commit crimes. And by the way, if you're a local prosecutor or a local U.S. attorney, the U.S. attorney for Arizona was upfront about this. They have no idea who's residing in their state that might be in the Witness Protection program or might be a criminal. So in case after case, we were finding out that murderers and con artists and people, the extraordinarily violent histories who had been enrolled into or entered into the Witness Protection program were unleashed into these communities with no state, local or federal law enforcement in those states knowing what was going on. It's scary as hell.

[Josh Dean]

The Witness Protection program was created because of the New York City mob. Prosecutors just couldn't crack the code of silence and make cases against key figures without providing immunity and promising protection for witnesses who feared rightly being killed before they could even testify. These days the program is used in all kinds of cases, including ones involving violent and chaotic groups, groups like the Mexican cartels or MS.13, truly dangerous people who happen to be willing to rat on their colleagues.

[Robert Anglin]

What happens today is that you've got some really violent people who get secret identities and they're put into communities where the community has no idea. And these have ended famously in many cases. One guy beheaded his neighbor in a fit of rage. Another went on a cross country crime spree.

[Josh Dean]

Robert just accepted that Frank Joya was now part of this hallowed tradition of men placed in Witness Protection who used its long and impenetrable shadow to commit crimes.

[Robert Anglin]

This is where it gets weird. We ran a multi part series dissecting who Frank Capri really was, the Frank Joya. We talked about his early days in the mob. I was able to build a biography based on interviews and court records. I talked about how the Witness Protection worked or doesn't work in this case, why it was set up. We talked about how the fraud worked. We walked through the fraud scheme again and we thought, this is it. Somebody's going to have to prosecute crickets. There seems to be no action by law enforcement. Some contacts I have in law enforcement, federal contacts, called me and said, man, you've embarrassed the crap out of these guys, but nobody's going to do anything. That turned out to be true. Nobody did anything.

[Josh Dean]

There was one result. I guess Frank Capri's Toby Keith restaurant scheme was at least foiled.

[Robert Anglin]

Then about six months later, I found.

[Josh Dean]

Out he was Doing it again with some added flourishes.

[Robert Anglin]

Frank is not by any stretch of the imagination a dumb person. He's a criminal genius. He was using proxies now, including his girlfriend, business partner, others, to run the same scheme on yet another country music icon. Or using them as the lure for more developers in another country restaurant scheme, as I called it, a country restaurant theme scheme. And that would have been the Rascal Flats Barn Grill. There's a world outside every dark indoor where blues won't haunt you anymore where the brave are free in lovers or come ride with me to the distant shore we are just days away from what was supposed to be the opening date of the Rascal Flats restaurant in the Flats East Bank. But the project appears to be stalled and no one knows when it will open. I want to make clear neither Toby Keith nor Rascal Flats had any idea who Frank was. Neither Toby Keith nor Rascal Flats was part of the scheme, has been digging for answers and has uncovered a bizarre business connection with none other than a former Mafia turncoat.

[Josh Dean]

This time around, Frank knew that he had to keep a low profile. He used his girlfriend and a business partner as the fronts of a new company that developed these Rascal Flats themed restaurants.

[Robert Anglin]

He would hold court in the back of these restaurants and order the new failures of the next iteration of his scheme.

[Josh Dean]

Basically, though, it was the same plan.

[Robert Anglin]

It was Toby Keith redux. And if anything, it was even more bold. The same people that he ripped off at malls on the Toby Keith scheme, he went back at them through his proxies and got them to sign new licensing agreements for the exact mall where Toby Keith had failure for the new Rascal Flats failures. And the developers ate it up until.

[Josh Dean]

Robert started working on a second set of stories.

[Robert Anglin]

But the moment that I said, you do understand that Frank Capri or Frank Joya Jr. Is running this just like he did the Toby Keith thing. You could see the light bulbs go on in the eyes of developers at this point. Some of the developers were willing to talk about it and very guarded, very general, but they were willing to say, we had no idea we were dealing with this guy. And as we explored that second scheme, I think the thing that made those stories work so well was we got Frank on audio, we got Frank Capri being Frank Gioia in phone conversations all over the country that were secretly recorded by one of his employees. And let's just say those recordings remove any doubt about who Frank is or what his deal is or what he wants done. Because it is mobster 101. You know something? You lie straight in my face, you son of a. See, I'm so pissed off, I'm gonna pull out of the whole job. It is Sopranos right off the script. It is Frank threatening, abusing, screaming in vitriol that would make a nun blush.

[Josh Dean]

You're trying to do that to me.

[Robert Anglin]

You. You go get a contract.

[Josh Dean]

Robert's second set of stories was published in 2019, four years after that first tip from his editor.

[Robert Anglin]

At that point, there was no way for the government to deny what was going on. And they finally opened an investigation. I'm told somewhere in the late part of 2019.

[Josh Dean]

This time, the program couldn't shield Frank Capri.

[Robert Anglin]

In February 2020, Frank Capri was indicted on fraud charges for both the Rascal Flats and the Toby Keith schemes.

[Josh Dean]

Not just wire fraud. There were also money laundering and conspiracy charges. Frank pleaded not guilty.

[Robert Anglin]

Not only did he plead not guilty, his lawyers started arguing that they needed to seal the courtroom. And this plays out for about a year and a half, a period in.

[Josh Dean]

Which Robert had some curious interactions with folks in Frank's orbit, especially with his girlfriend, Tawny Costa.

[Robert Anglin]

Frank tried to use his girlfriend to call me posing as different people and try to get information about who was providing me details early on. And I called her out on it and again, recorded conversations, and she. She would admit to it. So Tawny at one point threatened to sue us. There's a great exchange by lawyers about you might want to go listen to recordings by your own client. Perhaps that'll change your mind. I mean, the stories were buttoned down hard, and all of Frank's little mechanics couldn't derail them.

[Josh Dean]

There was also this.

[Robert Anglin]

She was opening restaurants as the Rascal Flats thing was imploding, and she opened a restaurant in downtown Phoenix, again with Frank's backing. And she agreed to an interview with our dining reporter at the time. And this would have been around 2019. And she met with our reporter, who I had talked to in advance and had armed her with a series of questions she should ask about Tawny's operation. And this interview occurred in a about to open restaurant, and there were only a couple of people in it. But Tawny lost her collective stuff and actually assaulted our reporter when the questions started getting heavy, stole the reporter's recorder and phone and ran out the back door, where she apparently called Frank and came to get her. And she ditched the phone. And I think there were two phones. She ditched them. And she was later prosecuted for assault. And she got a diversion sentence. That's the only threat we ever experienced at the newspaper.

[Josh Dean]

Frank, Robert says, never threatened him, nor did any of his associates, though he did check underneath his daughter's cars every time they left the driveway.

[Robert Anglin]

I was, as they like to say, watching my six constantly because I was cognizant that if nothing else, we had lost a storied investigator reporter in Arizona due to a car bomb in the 70s. Don Bowles. I didn't want my picture on the wall where his is.

[Josh Dean]

Eventually, there's just too much evidence. Frank takes a plea deal. He pleads guilty to white collar fraud and accepts a deal with the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona in exchange for a five year sentence plus 19 million in restitution to victims, 1.5 million of which was to go to the IRS. Those court proceedings, by the way, were sealed. Robert was kicked out of the courtroom at various points.

[Robert Anglin]

We could tell right away that it was revolving around the Witness protection program and Frank's real identity as a mobster.

[Josh Dean]

Capri got some time served and his five year sentence was completed in 2025.

[Robert Anglin]

Frank continued to deny who he was throughout all of this.

[Josh Dean]

He never once publicly admitted to being Frank Joya and went by Frank Capri throughout the legal proceedings and into his prison term. Then Frank got out and started a new hustle. That's right. He's podcasting now and he's telling all. His show, Made man, debuted in March of last year.

[Robert Anglin]

Okay, episode one, the Frank Joyer Jr. Show. Frank Joya. Frankie Joyer, also known as Frank Capri.

[Josh Dean]

Frank is spinning tales quite proudly about himself and his pals.

[Robert Anglin]

I hit him a six inch. I walk over to him, I say, cuba, come here, I want to talk to you. I got him up against the wall. Bang. Hit him a short right hand, right? And then I was hit him with the left. But it was enough, you know, I just hit him one shot.

[Josh Dean]

Yeah, you're trying to teach him a lesson. For the record, I reached out to Frank asking if he'd like to be interviewed. He never wrote back.

[Robert Anglin]

He's trying to turn a new leaf. He's telling everything about his past, the Mafia stuff. He's claiming that these were legitimate business operations. Toby Keith and Rascal Flats Bar and Grill schemes. Even though he pleaded guilty and took a deal on a five year Joel, talking about how his dad and his grandfather were made men in the mob and his familial ties, Robert has no.

[Josh Dean]

Ill will toward Frank. This, he says, is legitimately interesting stuff.

[Robert Anglin]

He's a fascinating character. And as mob historians and Mob lawyers said he became one of the pivotal witnesses as the mob collapsed in the late 90s. His testimony helped put dozens of mobsters in prison, some for unsolved homicides. Drugs, guns, the whole panoply of mob activity. He helped close cases, including the murder of an off duty police officer. He gave authorities enough to be able to close that case and prosecute on it. At one point, Frank Capri actually taught FBI guys on mob activity. He was actually teaching classes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on I don't know how to be a mobster and how these things worked. Frank unfortunately doesn't want to talk to me, but in his podcast he says, I wanted to be out front. They offered to put me in protective custody, but I'm here to be me now. And he says he's withdrawn from the witness protection program.

[Josh Dean]

And as far as Robert can tell, he's keeping his nose clean for now.

[Robert Anglin]

Although when he got out of prison, one of his requests, he wanted to sell used cars. He wanted to go into the car dealing business. And you know, there are certain industries that could raise an eyebrow. Bars, car dealerships, car washes. You just gotta wonder sometimes.

[Josh Dean]

Before we get to the credits, I hope you can indulge me with a little bit of additional self promotion. If you like Chameleon and what we're doing here, I think you might like another show that I'm making in this case as a co host. It's called Crimeless and it's a weekly show that takes a lighter look at true crime. Every week, the comedian Rory Scovell and I tackle some of the most hilarious stories in global crime, having some good old fashioned fun as we probe some of the weirdest and wildest tales from the criminal frontier. As we say in the tagline, it's a celebration of the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. If it sounds like something you might like, search Crimeless wherever you get your podcasts. And with that, I'll see you next week. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean, and was written and reported by me. Our producer is Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Siminhoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Theme by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review. Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help, and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email [e-mail] or leave us a message at a special number we've set up. 201-743-8368. Add a plus one if you're outside.

[Podcast Advertisers/Promoters]

North America, I think Chuck would approve.

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